265 



and prehensile part of his tail ; and, letting fall 

 the rest of his body, swings himself till in one 

 of his oscillations he reaches the neighbouring 

 branch. The whole file performs the same 

 action on the same spot. It is almost super- 

 fluous to add how dubious is the assertion of 

 Ulloa fj and so many well-informed travellers, 

 according to whom, the marimondoes •f*, the 

 araguatoes, and other monkeys with a prehensile 

 tail, form a sort of chain, in order to reach the 

 opposite side of a river. We had opportunities, 

 during five years, of observing thousands of 

 these animals ; and for this very reason we 

 place no confidence in relations, perhaps in- 

 vented by the Europeans themselves, though 

 repeated by the Indians of the missions, as if 

 they had been transmitted to them by their 

 fathers. Man, the most remote from civiliza- 

 tion, enjoys the astonishment he excites in re- 

 counting the marvels of his country. He says 

 he has seen what he imagines may have been 

 seen by others. Every savage is a hunter, and 

 the stories of hunters borrow from the imagina- 

 tion in proportion as the animals, of which they 

 boast the artifices, are endowed with a higher 



* This celebrated traveller has not hesitated to represent 

 in an engraving this extraordinary teat of the monkeys with 



a prehensile tail. — See Viage a la America meridional (Madrid, 

 1748), vol. \, p. 144—149. 

 t Simia belzebuth. See my Obs. de Zoo!., vol. i, p. 327, 



